“But I’ve got to see you.”
“Everybody’s got to see me. But I don’t have to see everybody. Especially when I look like this.”
“You are sort of pale, aren’t you? And your ribs stick out, Ellery.” She sounded like a debunked sister. Ellery suddenly remembered that in Hollywood dress is a matter of free enterprise. You could don a parka and drive a team of Siberian huskies from Schwab’s Drugstore at the foot of Laurel Canyon to NBC at Sunset and Vine and never turn a head. Fur stoles over slacks are acceptable if not de rigueur, the exposed navel is considered conservative, and at least one man dressed in nothing but Waikiki trunks may be found poking sullenly among the avocados at any vegetable stand. “You ought to put on some weight, Ellery. And get out in the sun.”
“Thank you,” Ellery heard himself saying.
His Garden of Eden costume meant absolutely nothing to her. And she was even prettier than he had thought. Hollywood prettiness, he thought sulkily; they all look alike. Probably Miss Universe of Pasadena. She was dressed in zebra-striped culottes and bolero over a bra-like doodad of bright green suede. Green open-toed sandals on her tiny feet. A matching suede jockey cap on her cinnamon hair. Skin toast-colored where it was showing, and no ribs. A small and slender number, but three-dimensional where it counted. About nineteen years old. For no reason at all she reminded him of Meg in Thorne Smith’s The Night Life of the Gods, and he pulled his head back and banged the door.
When he came out safe and suave in slacks, Shantung shirt, and burgundy corduroy jacket, she was curled up in his pony-skin chair smoking a cigaret.
“I’ve fixed your drink,” she said.
“Kind of you. I suppose that means I must ofter you one.” No point in being too friendly.
“Thanks. I don’t drink before five.” She was thinking of something else.
Ellery leaned against the picture window and looked down at her with hostility. “It’s not that I’m a prude, Miss―”